Politics

[Bla]

Enhedslisten isn't corrupt and morally bankrupt unlike the other parties though... They voted against it and spoke at the demonstration (my video is from one of their speeches).

The parlament would look neat with Enhedslisten taking up 179 of the seats.

[TheMooCows]

So do you agree with everything they believe? Or perhaps that was a bit of a hyperbole....becase to me any party that controls everything would not be good for denmark or any country. In some ways, it would be good because of a lack of debate but then again, sometimes one party doesn't always do the best thing for a certain for a country...it also takes away from your "democracy"...more so than it seems there is right now...

[Bla]

So do you agree with everything they believe? Or perhaps that was a bit of a hyperbole....becase to me any party that controls everything would not be good for denmark or any country. In some ways, it would be good because of a lack of debate but then again, sometimes one party doesn't always do the best thing for a certain for a country...it also takes away from your "democracy"...more so than it seems there is right now...

We don't agree about everything no, but we agree about much more than I agree with the other parties, so I'd prefer them over the other parties at any time. There can be debate within the party, we don't need the other parties for debate.

Also it doesn't intend to control everything, it intends to make the economy democratically controlled which it isn't now, the parlament has little power over this country, so them filling it up doesn't mean they control everything in this country. But it could hopefully mark the beginning of an era where the parlament and people of the country actually start getting more control over the country rather than it being sold out to multinational corporations at discount prices, like yesterday.

We need to realize that capitalist "democracies" aren't very democratic at all, no matter who is president or who is in your parlament, in the end they don't have a lot of power when corporations can threaten to move out or fire workers should they take decisions they agree with.

[Bla]

Kol this. In 2012, the manager salaries increased by 8 times as much as those of the employees in Denmark. 1039 people were asked whether they thought this trend should continue. 3.2% answered yes, 91.3% answered no, 5.5% didn't know.

When the newspaper Arbejderen confronted The Confederation of Danish Employers with the question, the response was:

"What kind of question is that? What a bunch of humbug! Have you considered explaining your readers, that there has been a development over a much longer period of time, and that you can't just look at a single year"

"but which previous development that made the manager salaries deserve this increase, they unfortunately did not want to spend their time explaining to the readers."
http://arbejderen.dk/fagligt/danskerne-vil-stoppe-direkt%C3%B8rl%C3%B8nningernes-himmelflugt

Kol

[Darvince]

Sounds identical to the trend in America.

[Bla]

Kol, just a week after the Dong-sale, they release their annual report. Guess what, their debt has been reduced by 6.2 billion DKK to 25.8 billion DKK and their deficit has been reduced from 4 billion DKK to a bit under 1 billion DKK. Those facts mean that it could've received significantly better ratings from the rating bureaus. In other words, selling at this time is the most ridiculous timing that you could possibly pick.

For the state, that is. Not for Goldman Sachs. But I guess it shouldn't be too hard to see which side the government is acting in the interest of.

Sources:
http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Penge/2014/02/05/094655.htm
http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Politik/2014/02/05/141357.htm


In other news, here's today's exposal of capitalist propaganda:

Groupon's website advertises pants at a price of 299 DKK, which they advertise as a discount of 75%. The ones who deliver the pants, Glamouretto OY from Finland, do sell the pants at the price of 1186 DKK. However, they also operate another website, where they sell them for 350 DKK.

Another example: A bath weight from AEG costs 229 DKK, according to Groupon with a regular price of 549 DKK, but only Groupon sells it for 549 DKK, and other sides sell it at 210 DKK, including delivering costs from Germany, and 225 DKK from a Danish site including delivery.

A third example: Groupon sells travels, a spa trip to Germany costs 1935 DKK with a discount of 35%, however, picking the exact same room in the exact same period from booking.com, costs 1761 DKK. 10% cheaper than Groupon's "discount" offer.

Source:
http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Indland/2014/02/04/160737.htm

Why are such fraudulent people making this not in prison?
Why do we as a society sell items at discount prices in the first place, why do we encourage people to buy more than they need, when we know our resource useage is dangerously unsustainable and we have problems with pollution to fix?

Capitalism is simply hopeless.

[Darvince]

Big, long dongs

[matty406]

Long Dong Silver

[Darvince]

If I ever take Dong Energy seriously it will be a cold gay.

[TheMooCows]

Me and atomic had an interesting talk about bias today. Actually we had it with a...person named Bob.

He defends Fox News as a reliable source because it "only has a 50% bias whereas MSNBC has a 90%". I contended (and still do) that there is no quantitative way to measure bias, and since this "study" gave a quantitative value I doubted it's truthfulness and reliability as a source.  Then came the interesting part, Bob (fake name ftw) said that they measure the stories, if they had bias then they were considered to be biased-in this case 50% of Fox's stories had bias whereas MSNBC had 90% of their stories have bias. I then asked whether it was the quantity of the stories that had bias or the amount of bias that matters. After he contradicted himself for a while I came up with an M & M scenario.

Say there were only two colors of M & M's...red and yellow. Each bag of M & M's contain 20 M & M's (red for our purposes will represent bias)
Two companies made M & M's... TMC M & M's and Bob's M&M's. Now, yellow M & M's tasted better and people wanted more bags with all yellow M & M's. 90% of TMC's bags contained 1 or 2 red M & M's. The rest contained all yellow M & M's. 50% of Bob's M & M's contained all yellow M & M's, however the bags that did contain red M & M's contained on average 15. Which company would you but M & M's from? One where you are almost guaranteed to get 1 or 2 red M & M's or the other, which would result in more red M & M's if you got unlucky.

Seems like an obivous choice to me, I would go with TMC M & M's but Bob said that TMC's M & M's were more biased because more of the bags had red M & M's. What do you guys think?

[vh]

1 or 2 averages to 1.5 m/m per bag for tmc
.9*18.5 + .1*20 = 18.65 yellow m/m on average per bag

.5*20 + .5*5 = 12.5 yellow m/m on average per bag for bob

apparently the answer is tmc

whether these numbers reflect the actual bias of various news sites is a different story though

[Bla]

As long as they have a bias towards reality I don't see the problem with them... but in Fox News case, their bias happens to be bias towards the opposite.

Saying "news source y has more bias than news source x, therefore news source x is a reliable source" is a pretty pathetic argument. Its reliability doesn't depend on the bias of other sources.


In other news, it has been revealed that the state-owned company Financial Stability, which took over many loans after banks went bankrupt during the crisis, has sold loans for 631 million DKK to a German bank, using Ireland as a tax haven to transfer them so that they can pay lower taxes than they'd have to in Denmark.
Questions have been sent to our government since December on this, but when our minister of business and growth was asked on this construction, he refused to answer.

Source:
http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Penge/2014/02/06/085347.htm

[vh]

we use 2 px because 1px results in corner borders which is apparently ugly.

anyways the thinner the better because it's less confusion over what is land and what is ocean

[Bla]

Wrong thread kol.

Also, the government is planning to sell out the last 10% of its stocks in Nets to the banks. Nets is responsible for the Dankort. However, you may wonder why banks would want to buy that for 16 billion DKK - if they didn't earn those money back. The expert in this video says they can't really bring down the operating costs, because it will result in Dankort failures (which happen occasionally), at the same time there aren't really going to be more people who use it, so their only way of really getting the money back would be by requiring transaction prices or other fees from the users. Until 2020, however, the law says that the shops may not increase the fees, and that all fees should be "fair". But from then and on, he says it is reasonable that the fees may double or triple, and may be required on transactions or other methods rather than the shops being required to pay.

Today, the Dankort is the cheapest paying card in the world.

Source:
http://nyhederne.tv2.dk/2014-02-06-ekspert-vurdering-dankortet-bliver-tre-gange-dyrere

Social democrats or liberals in the government, we still see the country being sold out to corporations day by day. Kol.

[vh]

2020: pia kjaersgaard's leg sold to barclays

[TheMooCows]

1 or 2 averages to 1.5 m/m per bag for tmc
.9*18.5 + .1*20 = 18.65 yellow m/m on average per bag

.5*20 + .5*5 = 12.5 yellow m/m on average per bag for bob

apparently the answer is tmc

whether these numbers reflect the actual bias of various news sites is a different story though

Well, I understand the fact that MSNBC has bias, but the fact that the quantitative # that the "study" found was based on the number of stories rather than the amount of bias led me to question the study and came up with the problem.

Just out of curiosity, say you had to pick one of the brands of M & M's and you would be forced to eat all of the M & M's in there. Yellow M & M's were the jealousy of the universe...tasting so amazing...it was undescribable. But...red M & M's were the exact opposite. After eating one, you would throw up. let's also change the percents. 100% of TMC's M & M's have one or two red M % M's whereas 66% of Bob's had all yellows and 33% had 15 reds. Would you take the TMC M & M's  and be sure of throwing up once or twice-or the Bob's M& M's in hopes of not throwing up at all.

[TheMooCows]

As long as they have a bias towards reality I don't see the problem with them... but in Fox News case, their bias happens to be bias towards the opposite.

Saying "news source y has more bias than news source x, therefore news source x is a reliable source" is a pretty pathetic argument. Its reliability doesn't depend on the bias of other sources.

You sir...are perhaps the second most biased person I know...the other being Bob. Such different opinions as well...it would be interesting to see you two in a room together. I agree that Fox tends to have a bad bias-one that I disagree with. Something you don't seem to ever admit is that there is two sides to every argument. You seem intent (maybe I am wrong about this, I don't know your thoughts or even you really) on just enforcing your thoughts and opinions without regard to others'. Now I may not agree with Bob (or you) but I can see the reasons that you believe what you do and neither reasons are slanted more towards reality as you see-they both stem from observations and personal beliefs.

As for the reliability I completely agree with you, it doesn't matter based on the other sources. Fox claims to be unbiased but they are not. Out of curiosity which of the M & M brands would you go with Bla?

[Bla]

Something you don't seem to ever admit is that there is two sides to every argument.

There is an infinite number of sides to most arguments, and usually an infinite number of incorrect sides. You can argue 2 + 2 equals 4, you can also argue it equals 3, 5, 7 or 28 for that matter, I don't admit there are many sides to every argument. Similarly, you can argue that increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases the temperature on the Earth and you can argue it doesn't. Of course there isn't one side to that argument. But there is one correct side to that argument and one denying reality. And Fox News tends to side with those who deny reality.

You seem intent (maybe I am wrong about this, I don't know your thoughts or even you really) on just enforcing your thoughts and opinions without regard to others'.

What do you base this on?

Now I may not agree with Bob (or you) but I can see the reasons that you believe what you do and neither reasons are slanted more towards reality as you see-they both stem from observations and personal beliefs.

Could you be more specific, maybe with an example?

As for the reliability I completely agree with you, it doesn't matter based on the other sources. Fox claims to be unbiased but they are not. Out of curiosity which of the M & M brands would you go with Bla?

With the second example I'd go with neither really, but if I had to pick, I'd pick the one that statistically would give the highest amount of good taste compared to bad taste, which should be yours.

Meanwhile in USA in a conversation with assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs from USA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSxaa-67yGM#t=178

I guess NSA had a good laugh when they heard it.

[vh]

1 or 2 averages to 1.5 m/m per bag for tmc
.9*18.5 + .1*20 = 18.65 yellow m/m on average per bag

.5*20 + .5*5 = 12.5 yellow m/m on average per bag for bob

apparently the answer is tmc

whether these numbers reflect the actual bias of various news sites is a different story though

Well, I understand the fact that MSNBC has bias, but the fact that the quantitative # that the "study" found was based on the number of stories rather than the amount of bias led me to question the study and came up with the problem.

Just out of curiosity, say you had to pick one of the brands of M & M's and you would be forced to eat all of the M & M's in there. Yellow M & M's were the jealousy of the universe...tasting so amazing...it was undescribable. But...red M & M's were the exact opposite. After eating one, you would throw up. let's also change the percents. 100% of TMC's M & M's have one or two red M % M's whereas 66% of Bob's had all yellows and 33% had 15 reds. Would you take the TMC M & M's  and be sure of throwing up once or twice-or the Bob's M& M's in hopes of not throwing up at all.

bias = bias per story * frequency of biased stories

tmc's have 1.5 reds on average
bob's have 1/3*15 = 5 reds on average

[Bla]

As for bias in my news sources:

DR is a news company owned by the Danish state and not funded by advertising. It is generally considered mostly unbiased or slightly leftist (from the perspective of people in here) and it is a reliable source of facts.
TV2 is a news company owned by the Danish state partially funded by advertising. It is also considered mostly unbiased or slightly rightist. I tend to avoid using it as a source unless what I link to shows the source, and I very rarely read their news.
Arbejderen is a communist newspaper with communist bias. Therefore I only use it as a source if its articles list its sources and I don't take its facts for granted.

[Bla]

This looks interesting. I haven't read anything about their methods/evidence yet though.

http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/

[Bla]

Kol, I found the message of this letter to be cute.

Do you watch TV or use the internet?
Then you must pay TV license.

The majority of the license goes to DR (Denmark's Radio). Maybe you don't like everything that DR makes, but there probably is something for you.

Your neighbor or your friends probably uses something else than what you do. And together, you pay for each other.

That is what the license is about - each of us give our own contribution and at the same time we are paying for everybody else.

License is something we give to each other.

[Darvince]

Kolmmunism.

[IrvingManiscalco]

Fetus, aka baby, aka unborn, aka human LIFE:
1 - Check
2 - Check
3 - Check
4 - Check

I don't really see why we're arguing over whether it's life, it's obviously alive, and it's made out of cells. That's not the point though. I'm pretty sure any unborn animal or anything is life.

Please stage for me a 6 billion people world that has no oil to move the machinery necessary to make all that food.

idk wait about 50 years and then we'll see?

Please please read more about medical industry and it's insanities. Please, I urge you! I'm on YOUR side, not theirs. I'm with YOU, not them. YOU are my brother.. not them. I want YOUR well being, not theirs.

You don't have to disagree with them on every little detail for them to be your enemy.

What I believe the plan is, is to make everybody dependent. If you depend you are in check, controlled, enslaved.

I believe we're already there, to a point. No one really cares to change anything either.

Sun energy hit's the oceans, and the oceans in turn spell co2 into the atmosphere.

Says no one qualified to speak on such topics ever. In fact, carbonic acid is now in much higher concentration in the oceans. Carbonic acid is created by water and CO2 interacting, it can do this at room temperature. To give a bit of scale, it's not like CO2 touches water and all of a sudden it's carbonic acid. It probably happens at more the rate water evaporates. It also breaks up and becomes water and CO2. Carbonic acid exists in a state of equilibrium. With this established, it can be deduced with logic, simply that, more CO2 in the atmosphere = more carbonic acid in the oceans at any one time. If CO2 is being released from the oceans by solar panels (which it basically does, causing the equilibrium, but is then quickly replaced, so we're talking about about a net release, more goes out than comes in), then carbonic acid should be less prevalent, but what would stop this released CO2 from entering the ocean again as carbonic acid? Nothing. So in fact, it should stay the same.

CO2 + H2O is in equilibrium with H2CO3[/u]

The reality is, the quantity of carbonic acid in the oceans (and thus CO2 in the atmosphere as well) is rising. This should lead one to believe that CO2 is being released elsewhere, not the oceans.

I am still not sure how can sun can produce co2 after hitting ocean surface..It is completely wrong..We need to control pollution nothing else.

[blotz]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/02/13/kansas_anti_gay_segregation_bill_is_an_abomination.html
i'm not sure what it is reading
edit: boo

[Bla]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/02/13/kansas_anti_gay_segregation_bill_is_an_abomination.html
i'm not sure what it is reading
edit: boo

Aah, religion, polluting the world as usual with its evil influence, what a surprise.

I am still not sure how can sun can produce co2 after hitting ocean surface..It is completely wrong..We need to control pollution nothing else.

That doesn't happen no, you quote Atomic's post but in his post you'd see he's not claiming that it's happening at all.
Unless you're refering to

For this, I present you... the majestic, the megalith, the all powerful mighty SUN. Sun energy hit's the oceans, and the oceans in turn spell co2 into the atmosphere. CO2 SUCCEEDS heating. More sun energy, more heat, more heat, more co2. This isn't me talking, this is the most renowned and intelligent climatologists speaking.

In that case I can agree that the above isn't true.

Anyway we also have a thread for just discussing global warming/climate change
http://universesandbox.com/forum/index.php/topic,1229.0.html
even though there are also many political aspects of that discussion.

[matty406]

That's a generalization, you can't just say "Evil religion did this", what happened is "conservatively religious individuals in power with an agenda did this"

[Bla]

That's a generalization, you can't just say "Evil religion did this", what happened is "conservatively religious individuals in power with an agenda did this"

They did it because they followed an evil religion with an evil book that promotes the evil worldview that gays shouldn't be considered equals. Had the religion not existed, I don't doubt for one second that the law would not have come up. After all, every single line of this piece of toilet paper is really just "respect our intolerant religious ideas and let us fire you, refuse to sell you goods, refuse to marry you, refuse you services etc. if we don't like the fact you're gay because of our stupid religion"

Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Kansas:
Section 1. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no individual
or religious entity shall be required by any governmental entity to do any
of the following, if it would be contrary to the sincerely held religious
beliefs of the individual or religious entity regarding sex or gender:
(a) Provide any services, accommodations, advantages, facilities,
goods, or privileges; provide counseling, adoption, foster care and other
social services; or provide employment or employment benefits, related to,
or related to the celebration of, any marriage, domestic partnership, civil
union or similar arrangement;
(b) solemnize any marriage, domestic partnership, civil union or
similar arrangement; or
(c) treat any marriage, domestic partnership, civil union or similar
arrangement as valid.
Sec. 2. (a) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no refusal by
an individual or religious entity to engage in any activity described in
section 1, and amendments thereto, shall result in:
(1) A civil claim or cause of action under st

http://www.kslegislature.org/li/b2013_14/measures/documents/hb2453_01_0000.pdf
and on and on and on... We've seen it all before.

In other news, Uganda's president has said he's ready to sign the law enacted by the parlament last month that means gays could face life imprisonment.

Source:
http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Udland/2014/02/14/221555.htm
http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Udland/2014/01/17/0117112236.htm

Not all religions promote such views no, true, and not all religious individuals of that religion believe in that either, but that is what the religion in these cases (christianity) says. In my opinion, the bible and christianity offers no respect and thus deserves none.

[tuto99]

There are two different ends in this spectrum I thought about...
On one end of the spectrum, there are people who don't tolerate irreligious people (or other religions) On the other hand, there are those who don't tolerate religious people. I sit comfortably in the middle, nice and cozy.

I think we should all have what's called tolerance, an acceptance to one's beliefs. Obviously there should be a universal border where one's beliefs should NOT be accepted, because their views are harmful, discriminating, obscene, or in general just negative. What I mean by universal is that, everyone should take into consideration about one's beliefs.

This is not going to happen to everyone as you or I may already assume, but for those whose beliefs can be changed, I think this is a great way of clearing up unnecessary stress.

Moral of the story: don't fucking accuse anyone of anything until you get to know them. Please.

[matty406]

I thought you'd say something like that Bla.
It's as if you think Christianity is this magic force that corrupts people from the inside out. There are bad Christians, and there are good Christians, and it all hinges on how much they individually interpret their faith.
Some believe they must relay the word of god, no matter how harsh it is, they probably even warp the faith for their own needs.
Others, though, have the faith to do as much good as they can.

If they use religion for bad and their own gains, fuck em. If they use it to help them get by, and to do good for others, then they're doing it right.

That is my view, the people make what they will of the scriptures. Lots don't even read the scriptures.

Whatever